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In the heat of the photographic moment, it can be very easy to focus only on the subject of the shot and ignore what’s happening in the background. It’s only when we download the images onto our computer, or get them developed, that we realize that we also managed to capture a whole array of distracting clutter.

Steps

1

Crop the background. Cropping out as much of the background as possible is a simple easy, short-cut. Just make sure that you don’t detract from some of the basic rules of composition and symmetry.

2

Select your subject. Use the lasso tool from our toolbox to very roughly select around our subject. Make sure that you leave a little bit of space around his body. Eliminate some of the extraneous space by feathering our edge. In Photoshop, go to Select - Feather. The value will differ depending on the final size of our image. You want to choose a number of pixels that brings the marquee selection closer into your subject without crossing over any of their edges.

3

Blur the background. To blur the background use the Gaussian blur tool. Go to - Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur. Choose a value that blurs the background without totally eliminating our perception of the subjects. If you have the preview button ticked you can keep trying until you get something that works perfectly.

4

Saturate/Desaturate. In the final stage, desaturate the background slightly to further increase the emphasis on the main subject. Select your sponge tool and set it to desaturate 15%, then brush over the majority of the background.

5

After de-saturating the background, change the sponge tool to saturate and set it at a smaller value (7-8%) Paint over the subject to slightly bring out the colour. The final effect should be subtle - but should help the subject of your image - just pop a little out of the background.

Article Info

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, volunteer authors worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has also been viewed 9,846 times.